Mini reviews of old movies, mostly VHS tapes purchased by Eli Schuster in Goodwill, Value Village and Salvation Army stores across Toronto. Think of this site as a follow-up to http://www.minireviewsminibooks.blogspot.com/

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Thursday, March 6, 2014

Three Kings (1999)

Hmm...the VHS jacket mentions “four American
soldiers” and yet the movie title is Three
Kings. That ought to tell you something...

Synopsis: If you’ve
ever wanted to see Kelly’s Heroes
remade with scenes of heartbreaking and brutal violence, this is your movie.

Blurb From the VHS
Jacket: “Absurdly comic, highly kinetic, at times shockingly emotional,
Three Kings begins when the Gulf War is over. Amid the partying and confusion,
four American soldiers (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike
Jonze), determined to take home more than sand fleas, go off into the Iraqi
desert to find millions in stolen Kuwaiti bullion.”

What Did I Learn?:
Apparently, Eddie Murphy’s Party All the
Time is “bad music.” [I disagree, by
the way]

Really?: Same
question I asked during Kelly’s Heroes:
how exactly are they supposed to smuggle all of that gold back into the United
States, and then how do they sell it?

Rating:Three
Kings is an exciting, sometimes-funny, and often-disturbing war film, and one
of the best-articulated examples of an argument we don’t hear much, anymore: George H. W. Bush should have finished the
job in 1991 and marched on to Baghdad. The biggest problem with Three Kings is that while the movie
starts out as escapist fun, it quickly turns into something much darker, and it’s
chock full of scenes – torture, executions, etc – that are almost unbearable to
watch. 6.5/10 stars.